


If That’s Love

by cylikkious



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, But no, Eventual Fluff, Family Feels, Heavy Angst, No Apocalypse, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy-centric, Other, Self-Doubt, Self-Hatred, Tags May Change, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, delores is kind of a bully in this one, not right now bitch
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-17 10:55:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18963841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cylikkious/pseuds/cylikkious
Summary: Five still speaks to Delores. She never seems too happy.





	If That’s Love

**Author's Note:**

> If that’s love then I don’t know what is  
> If that’s true then I’m a fraud  
> If it’s real then I must seem like such a fool  
> To have saved my love for one 
> 
>  
> 
> — Shawn James, If That’s Love

“What was that, Delores?”

 

Five isn’t sure if he’s heard correctly. He is not sure why she’d be asking such a question, if she said what he thought she had. He bounces knee in his chair, holding a Dixie cup of vodka. It’s only a little.

 

_“Do you love me?”_ She asks.

 

He raises an eyebrow. “Of course I do, dear.”

 

The room is awfully quiet. He swishes his drink around, not sure if he really wants to finish it all anymore. The chairs cover makes him think of blood. He kind of likes it. It’s intimidating, red whine color, and all he needs is a white cat and an eyepatch to complete the look. Delores is the only brightness in the room now.

 

_“What does it feel like?”_ She asks yet another perplexing question.

 

He scrunches his face, staring her in the eye. He feels nervous. “What do you mean?”

 

She sighs, a whisper, just wind, in the silence of the room. _“Tell me what you feel, when you think about love.”_

 

He leans back with a huff. The ceiling sure is pretty, with all those swirls in the plaster. There’s a coolness to the air. He forgets to think.

 

_“Why have you gone quiet?”_

 

She pulls him from his procrastination. He fiddled with his cup. “I don’t know.”

 

Delores leans forward from across him. _“How do you not know?”_

 

Five pauses. He isn’t sure how. “I can’t put it into words.”

 

The quietness creeps up again. It gives him time to cool the anxiousness that pools and heats up in his stomach. He is looking upwards again. He feels her eyes burning into his neck.

 

_“Do you feel nothing of it?”_

 

He is unsettled by that assumption. He looks at her now, eyes alarmed, eyebrows drawn together. The uneasiness and uncertainty fill his insides once again. “I feel plenty.”

 

She doesn’t seem too convinced. She turns her head away from him. He feels shunned. _“Why can’t you tell me?”_

 

“What do you mean?” He asks again.

 

She’s not happy. _“How can I trust that you love me, if you can’t even describe what love is?”_

 

“I love you,” he says, sounding desperate, “I just can’t put it any differently.”

 

He looks at how his drink splashes at the sides of his cup. He still sways it calmly. The room feels like it’s getting warmer, or maybe that’s just the vodka warming him from inside.

 

_“I don’t think you’ve ever felt love.”_

 

The accusation makes Five feel sick.

 

“That makes no sense.”

 

She wipes a tear from her eye. _“It makes plenty of sense, darling.”_

 

“I don’t understand.”

 

_“Do you ever say anything else?”_

 

Five is shocked. She never used to talk like this. Maybe her time with her friends has changed her, much like he has with his family.

 

“I’d die for you, Delores.” He says with all the sweetness he has.

 

She’s silent again. He lets out a long, frustrated exhale. He decides to drink a bit more of his vodka. He sinks further into the blood red chair. Everything is quite dark.

 

Delores weeps across from him. He doesn’t know what to do.

 

“Honey, it’s alright, it’s okay—“

 

_“But Five, it isn’t. You don’t love me. You’ve never loved anyone.”_

 

His breath hitches. “You _know_ that’s not true.”

 

She still has her head away from his own. Her hand pushes on his chest, delicately telling him to move from his kneeling spot at her chair. He didn’t realize he had moved at all.

 

_“You might think you do,”_ she says, _“but we both know. You would never tell me if you didn’t.”_

 

His chest beats with anger. His cheeks flush red in frustration. “I wouldn’t,” he admits, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t.”

 

She stares at him hopelessly. _“I can’t believe you, Five.”_

 

“I don’t understand, Delores, what do you mean?”

 

_“I need you to stop saying that, over and over.”_ She shakes her head. _“You don’t feel love, darling.”_

 

“I do, though, I _do_.” He begs. “I’ve done everything for you.”

 

Delores shushes him calmly. _“You’ve done it for yourself.”_

 

“If anything other than you I’ve done it for my _family_ —“

 

_“Baby, you haven’t. You do not love your family.”_

 

He seethes. “Don’t you dare say that, Delores!”

 

She folds her arms. Five feels surreal.

 

“What makes you think like this?” He asks her, quiet, upset.

 

_“You know what, Five,”_ she says, standing up, making him tumble into his chair, _“I’m leaving.”_

 

“No!”

 

But she’s already gone.

 

He is alone in the room, nothing but air sitting in the chair across from his own. His remaining vodka has been dropped to the ground carelessly. He sits, hot, shocked, heart broken.

 

Someone knocks on the door, Allison in fact, and asks why he was yelling. He tells her to leave him alone. She does.

 

He holds in tears until his eyes are too shielded by the liquid that he cannot blink without them falling.

 

He slinks back to his room once everyone is asleep.

 

Rest does not come to him until the sun is already risen.

**Author's Note:**

> okay babies, next chapter we see the others (: 
> 
>  
> 
> ): 
> 
>  
> 
> can i have a hug


End file.
